Overview:
"Myanmar’s first census in over 30 years, an ambitious project conducted in April
2014 with technical advice from the UN and significant funding from bilateral donors,
has proved to be highly controversial and deeply divisive. A process that was largely
blind to the political and conflict risks has inflamed ethnic and religious tensions in
this diverse country. The release of the inevitably controversial results in the coming
months will have to be handled with great sensitivity if further dangers are to be
minimised.
The census will provide information vital for Myanmar’s government, development
partners and investors in planning their activities. But it has also created political
tensions and sparked conflict at a crucial moment in the country’s transition
and peace process. Some controversies are inevitable in any census. However, the way
that the process has been designed and prepared, insufficiently sensitive to the country’s
evolving realities and the major risks that they present, has greatly exacerbated
its negative impact.
Such problems were not inevitable, nor were they unforeseen. They largely stem
from the way data on ethnicity, religion and citizenship status are being collected
and classified, and the lack of consultation with key constituencies in the design of
the process. The serious risks involved were anticipated and clearly laid out in the
political risk assessment that the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) – the lead technical
agency involved – commissioned at the beginning of the process, and they were
subsequently repeated and amplified by many other stakeholders and observers,
including Crisis Group. However, UNFPA rejected such concerns, consistently presented
a panglossian perspective on the census and failed to acknowledge specific
political or conflict risks.
Key census donors failed to recommend fundamental revisions to the process,
even when a census pilot had to be cancelled in Rakhine State due to fears of violence
and when key ethnic armed groups called for the enumeration to be postponed. Only
at the last minute, when a Rakhine census boycott morphed into violent attacks on
international aid agencies that sparked a humanitarian crisis, did most push for such
changes.
The impact of these problems has been far-reaching, exacerbating inter-ethnic
and inter-religious tensions. The census has been interrupted in parts of Rakhine State,
following a last-minute government decision to prevent the Rohingya population from
self-identifying its ethnicity – a move intended to placate Rakhine radicals, who were
committed to a boycott and could have unleashed deadly violence. Amid a massive
and intimidatory security operation in Rohingya communities, those households who
insisted on identifying as such – the great majority in many areas – were left out of
the census entirely. In Kachin State, no census has been allowed to take place in areas
controlled by the Kachin Independence Organisation armed group, due in part to
concerns about how ethnicity data are being collected. The Myanmar military has
been used to secure contested areas in Kachin and northern Shan States in order to
allow access to census enumerators. In the process, serious clashes have broken out
between the two sides, and hundreds of civilians have had to flee. This has put further
strain on the peace process at a critical time.
Without doubt, the government has been found wanting in its approach to addressing
the communal tensions that have proved so threatening to Myanmar’s Muslim
community and particularly its Rohingya population. These problems pre-date talk
of a census. The authorities, through their public statements, the behaviour of law
enforcement personnel and in the laws enacted have to do a lot more to demonstrate
that the state’s concern is for the welfare of all. Equally, a census that was more sensitive
to political realities, or one conducted at a less volatile time, could have limited
or avoided some of the problems now being stoked. Further risks exist in the timing
and manner in which census data are released. These will not be easy to mitigate at
this point, and UNFPA and the donors will have much less influence now that the
most technically demanding and costly aspects of the process have been completed.
Rather than accept their share of responsibility for designing and pushing ahead
with a flawed process in the face of clear warnings from multiple quarters, UNFPA
and key census donors have sought to shift the blame wholly onto the government.
They have criticised its last-minute decision to deny Rohingya the right to selfidentify,
while failing to acknowledge that by pushing it not to amend or postpone
the process earlier on, they left the government in a difficult position with few good
options to avoid violence. The narrative that is thereby being presented – that the
process was going well until the government’s last-minute volte-face – is inaccurate
and in the circumstances unhelpful."